The BLOG

As a new year dawned, so did a new project from my favourite government research council. I was approached by the Science and Technology Facilities Research Council (STFC) to redevelop the materials for their unique ‘Lunar Loans’ scheme.

This scheme allows schools and universities to borrow samples of lunar material brought back to Earth during NASA’s Apollo missions – as well as samples of meteorites (I know, cool eh?). The project will be ongoing throughout the year, so, to kick things off, we decided to develop a couple of new ‘broadsheets’ (big double-sided posters that can folded into something resembling a booklet) to accompany the revamp.

This will be the first time that such posters have accompanied the main package of educational materials, so there was no existing broadsheet to redevelop. This gave me a nice clean slate and free-rein to source the information myself and create the poster as I saw fit… luckily, the STFC also thought it was fit for porpoise (sic).I decided that, this being a ‘Lunar Loans’ scheme, it would appropriate to start with a Moon-based broadsheet… so that’s what I did.

*For those baffled by my need to spell out the word ‘Moon’ in the title, it’s a reference to a character in Stephen King’s ‘The Stand’, Tom Cullen, for whom everything is spelled ‘M-O-O-N’.

Author

Ben Gilliland is a freelance science writer, graphic journalist, illustrator and author with more than 20 years of experience. This is where he talks about work he has done... on the off-chance anyone is interested.